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4 Dates to Circle in October

Here are a few days to keep an eye on this month.

October is here, and investors are hoping that there are more treats than tricks in store.

Let's go over a few of the upcoming days to watch.

October 17Fast casual continues to grow as casual-dining eateries and fast-food chains languish, and Chipotle Mexican Grill(NYSE:CMG) has been leading the way.

The popular burrito roller reports in two weeks, and analysts see revenue and earnings climbing 17% and 22%, respectively. You're not seeing that kind of growth out of traditional restaurant operators, and that's probably why Chipotle shares hit a fresh 52-week high yesterday.

Chipotle has been able to grow its comps through all economic climates. One challenge has been margins, but clearly Wall Street doesn't see that as a problem this time around in targeting bottom-line growth to outpace sales.

October 18The tablet market continues to get more competitive, and Amazon.com(NASDAQ:AMZN) is hoping to raise the stakes with its Kindle HDX.

The 7-inch model hits the market on October 18, giving Amazon a strong entry for the holiday shopping season as a full-featured device.

Amazon has been essentially selling its Kindle Fire gadgetry at cost, knowing that it can make it back through its ecosystem of digital downloads and services. This may or may not be a good business practice for Amazon, but it's creating nightmares for its competitors as buyers know that they're getting a lot of bang for their tablet buck by going with Amazon.

October 22Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT) took a bath on the first line of Surface tablets, but now it's ready to give it another go.

Surface 2 will hit the market in three weeks, and the software giant is hoping that it won't repeat the same mistakes that resulted in having to take a $900 million inventory charge on soft-selling Surface RT tablets the first time around.

It's not the only update that Microsoft is working on this month. The Windows 8.1 update -- tackling some of the shortcomings of Windows 8 that has failed to breathe new life into the PC market -- goes out five days earlier. Microsoft's quarterly report follows two days later.

October 29Speaking of Microsoft, Nokia(NYSE:NOK) reports near the end of the month.

This will be the Finnish smartphone pioneer's first quarterly report since its decision to sell its devices and services business to Nokia for roughly $7.2 billion.

Finland itself has been in an uproar over how a Microsoft executive was brought in, saw the company's value crater, only to sell its prized asset to Microsoft while collecting a fat bonus on the way back to his former company.

Author

Since 1995, Rick has been writing for The Motley Fool, where he's a consumer and tech stocks specialist. Yes, that's a long time with more than 20,000 bylines over those 24 years. He's been an analyst for Motley Fool Rule Breakers and a portfolio lead analyst for Motley Fool Supernova since each newsletter service's inception. He earned his BBA and MBA from the University of Miami, and he splits his time living in Miami, Florida and Celebration, Florida.
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